PARIS — When he visited the construction site of Notre-Dame de Paris last December, did French President Emmanuel Macron think he would trigger such a storm by announcing the launch of a contest for six contemporary figurative stained glass windows intended for the south facade of the cathedral?
Exactly one year before the planned reopening, in December 2024, the president wanted to include “the mark of the 21st century” in one of the most visited monuments in France. That wish is shared by the Archbishop of Paris, Laurent Ulrich. A few months earlier, two contemporary designers, Guillaume Bardet and Ionna Vautrin, had already been selected to craft cathedral’s liturgical furniture and chairs, respectively.
The news of the future stained glass windows, expected for 2026, sparked an outcry because they are set to replace the panels in six of the seven side chapels designed by famous French architect Eugène Viollet-le-Duc in the 19th century.
Born in France in the Middle Ages, at the time of cathedrals, stained glass is not exactly new to controversy.
A century of controversies
An attempt to introduce stained glass windows designed by a dozen contemporary artists in 1937 launched 30 years of quarrels. That controversy was finally resolved in 1965 by André Malraux, then Minister of Culture, in favor of a single artist: Jacques Le Chevallier, a painter, engraver and stained glass artist.
“At least the episode raised some interesting questions,” says Anne-Claire Garbe, curator of the Cité du Vitrail, a stained glass museum in Troyes, who’s preparing an exhibition on the dispute for next summer.
At the end of the 1930s, Father Couturier had more success in convincing the Church to call on visual artists, who weren’t necessarily Christians, to craft the stained glass windows of the brand new Our Lady Full of Grace of the Plateau d’Assy, facing Mont Blanc. In the name of art, this Dominican friar and Catholic priest, who was also a designer of stained glass windows and co-director of Catholic magazine L’Art Sacré, said at the time: “It is better to address men of genius without faith than to believers without talent.”
Construction was interrupted by the war, so the church was only consecrated in 1950. Between Henri Matisse, Fernand Léger, Georges Rouault, Georges Braque and even Jean Bazaine — to mention just the stained glass windows — the church offers an overview of the art of the period, which the public can still admire today.
A first in a modern religious building, this was followed by another unprecedented initiative: the inauguration, the same year, of stained glass windows by Alfred Manessier in the Romanesque Église Saint-Michel des Bréseux, in the Doubs department in eastern France. Manessier, a master of the New School of Paris, had made the panels upon the request of abbots Comment and Ledeur. These two initiatives mark the actual beginning of the revival of sacred art.
This revival, which continued until the 1970s, was fueled by efforts to rebuild the damage caused by World War II, as well as the need to erect new churches to accommodate increasing urban populations due to the rural exodus.
Art historians often cite the Metz Cathedral among the most emblematic projects of this period. This remarkable work was led by chief architect of historic monuments, Robert Charles Renard. The contemporary art enthusiast was able to bring together Marc Chagall, Jacques Villon and Roger Bissière to help decorate the religious building which possesses the largest glass surface in France — a perennial tourist attraction for the eastern city.
Lack of harmonization and local reluctance
“In the 1980s, the French state led a voluntarist policy of creation renewal with numerous projects in cathedrals and churches, calling on artists from the international scene, who had in theory never tried their hand at stained glass windows,” says Véronique David, honorary researcher at Paris’ André-Chastel center, an art history laboratory.
Marked by a succession of experiments, Culture Minister Jack Lang’s term culminated with the controversial Nevers Cathedral project shared between Jean-Michel Alberola, Gottfried Honegger, François Rouan, Claude Viallat and Markus Lüpertz — which was criticized for a lack of harmony among the various artists’ works.
In 1987, the replacement of the historic and polychrome panels of the 95 windows and 9 arrowslits of Conques’ Abbey Church of Sainte-Foy, entrusted to Pierre Soulages, sparked a new controversy. But the French painter and sculptor who discovered his calling in this abbey at the age of 14 clung to his project for eight years, overcoming local reluctance and political changes.
Paradoxically, the “painter of black” chose so-called white glass — that is to say colorless — which respects the wavelengths of natural light. “Only natural light seemed suitable to me,” explained Soulages, who was keen to “respect the identity of the building.” Since then, this Romanesque masterpiece has been renowned as much for the beauty of its 12th-century tympanum as for the contemporary aesthetic of its stained glass windows, whose milky white is reminiscent of the alabaster panels that were used long before glass.
New techniques, new uses
“Since the turn of the century, there has been more emphasis on embellishment,” notes Jean-François Lagier, managing director of Chartres’ International Stained Glass Center, a structure founded in 1980 to promote the art. “These past 20 years have been marked by a great diversity of expression and means implemented,” Lagier adds.
Beyond aesthetics, techniques also contribute to modernity. Thermoforming, enamels on glass, printing on glass, superposition or fusion of glasses together, multi-faceted dichroic glasses: there are many possibilities to exploit the properties of glass. Advances in ovens also make it possible to better control glass baking temperatures and therefore the desired results.
For an artist, this gives an opportunity to leave his studio and work hand in hand with stained glass artists as well as specialized glass suppliers, such as Saint-Just near Saint-Étienne, in eastern-central France, or Bavaria’s Lamberts.
For the 16 bays entrusted to her by Metz Cathedral in 2020, Korean multi-disciplinary conceptual artist Kimsooja set her sights on dichroic glasses, which have differentiated colored effects thanks to residues of oxides on their surface. When the person who looks at the glass moves, he alternately sees the color and its diffraction as a rainbow.
“It took the expertise of master glassmaker Pierre-Alain Parot [now deceased, Editor’s note], to find the technical means of using them by adopting a double skin system, gluing these reflective glasses to the classic hand-blown transparent glasses,” explains Laurent Innocenzi, a Culture ministry advisor who followed the project.
The stained glass window brings light and transparency, and the diffusion of colors echoes that of the multiple screens that surround us. “The color pigments of images on screen are revealed by rear projection and not by refraction of light,” rightly notes visual artist Fabienne Verdier, who designed the windows of the choir of the church of Nogent-sur-Seine near Paris. “This work allowed me to do a complete overhaul of my experience of color and light,” adds the artist, who had to accept the uncertainties linked to the use of fire in producing glass.
The art of stained glass is constantly reinventing itself. Today, artists are increasingly seduced by this very lively mode of expression, which makes light visible thanks to color. It inspires both visual artists and decorators and goes beyond its historical religious scope. This know-how is not only used in luxury boutiques, shipbuilding and high-end housing, but also in car parks, train stations and sports facilities.
Modern successors
There’s no doubt that the Notre-Dame Cathedral contest project is inspiring an evolving artistic scene. A new generation is emerging alongside the well-known veterans Kim En Joong, a Korean Dominican father who has produced hundreds of abstract creations in France and abroad, Jean-Michel Alberola (Nevers, and this year the Autun Cathedral), Udo Zembok (Créteil) or François Rouan (Nevers and this year a building in the Fontevraud Abbey).
Jean-Michel Othoniel, a glass artist known for his beads and bricks, has developed a passion for stained glass since 2008. He has worked both for religious buildings (the Angoulême Cathedral, and currently the Basilica of Saint-Sernin in Toulouse), as well as for ephemeral creations at the Palais idéal du facteur Cheval in southeastern France or the Connaught Hotel in London.
Verdier adapted the traditional technique of silver staining and grisaille to contemporary aesthetics in Nogent-sur-Seine, and in Troyes, on the oculus of the chapel of the Cité du Vitrail. American painter Kehinde Wiley willingly pastiches classic religious themes in his stained glass windows by including African-American characters, some of which are regularly exhibited in the same Cité du Vitrail. As for photographer and visual artist Véronique Ellena, she is now working with the Réattu museum in southern Arles, after the Strasbourg Cathedral.
In any case, the contest’s candidates will have to demonstrate to the artistic committee, established on March 8 by Culture Minister Rachida Dati, their ability to craft a response as extraordinary and enduring as the cathedral. Next November, the committee will select the winning pair: an artist and a glass workshop. Their work will have to be “figurative,” in accordance with what was announced last December.
“Since 1998, with Gérard Garouste at Notre-Dame de Talant, near Dijon, and Martial Raysse at Notre-Dame-de-l’Arche-d’Alliance in the 15th arrondissement of Paris, there has been a return to figurative art,” notes art historian Véronique David.
But we will still have to wait until 2026 to admire “the mark of the 21st century” on Notre-Dame de Paris. And this, for ever and ever.
